Corporations are not people, Dems argue

Friday

Jan 25, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Clive McFarlane

As expected Democrats are mounting a counterattack against the January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United ruling that gave corporations the same freedom of speech protection that is constitutionally afforded to individuals.

The ruling, as was borne out by the unprecedented spending in the last election, means that unions and corporations are not constrained in how much they can engage and spend on political campaigns.

Estimates are that some $6 billion was spent in the November elections, more than $700 million more than the next highest spending election in 2008.

A great deal of the spending was done by super PACs and other outside groups, which, as a result of the Citizens United ruling, were able to receive unlimited contributions from wealthy donors.

Congressman Jim McGovern, who recently introduced a constitutional amendment bill to overturn the Citizens United ruling, and who has spent the last couple of days making his case locally, including a session at Clark University Thursday, noted that the ruling “marks the most extreme extension of corporate rights doctrine which has eroded our First Amendment and our Constitution.”

That corporate rights doctrine is based on U.S law, which, with some exceptions, allows corporations and other legal entities to be treated as a person.

According to United States Code, for example, “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise — the words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.”

In his bill to amend the Constitution, Mr. McGovern is asking that “The words people, person, or citizen as used in the Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities…”

He is also asking that corporations be subjected to reasonable state and federal regulations.

“Corporations are not people,” he said.

“They do not breathe. They do not have children. They do not die in war. They are artificial entities which we the people create and, as such, we govern them, not the other way around.”

Mr. McGovern will find an ally in retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was one of the dissenters in the court’s controversial 5- 4 ruling on Citizens United.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens noted that a significant flaw of the ruling was that it did not make a distinction “between corporate and human speakers…”

“Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it,” he noted. “They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters.

“The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process.

“Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”

Justice Stevens made that latter point more succinctly in a speech he gave last year at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.

He noted that during televised debates among presidential candidates, the moderators made an effort to allow each speaker an equal opportunity to express his or her views.

“Both the candidates and the audience would surely have thought the value of the debate to have suffered if the moderators had allocated the time on the basis of the speaker’s wealth, or if they had held an auction allowing the most time to the highest bidder,” he said.

“Yet that is essentially what happens during actual campaigns in which rules equalizing campaign expenditures are forbidden.”

Of course we don’t need a legal mind such as that of Justice Stevens to tell us that giving corporations the same natural rights as individuals leads to a life of groveling servitude for the people.

If corporations were people, one would have expected them to absorb some of the angst and the economic pain suffered by millions of Americans during this recent recession.

As it was, while millions of Americans were losing their jobs, losing their homes and their retirement savings, corporate profits were hitting historic highs.